John Gray & Einstein’s Library

I love this Peter Hitchens review[1] of the philosopher John Gray’s new book, Seven Types Of Atheism[2]. A few years back, I was on a John Gray[3] kick around here. His 2008 book Black Mass[4], which is a critique of the Enlightenment as a secularization of the Christian apocalypse and utopia, is must reading. Gray is an atheist who has zero tolerance for pop atheism. His political views have been fluid over the years, having gone from left to right to his current position, which seems to be skeptical of just about everything.

Gray’s new book criticizes atheism from an atheist perspective. Peter Hitchens, a former atheist turned Christian, likes the book, with reservations. Excerpts:

From this approach springs Gray’s opening paradox that “contemporary atheism is a flight from a godless world.” Unlike so many modern scoffers at religion, he grasps that while the idea of a just God is terrifying, so is the suspicion or the conviction that there is no just God. The idea of a universe where there is no power that stands for order and justice is, or ought to be, very frightening. So men who can no longer believe in God have instead invented various more or less fatuous concepts to provide such a power, especially a belief in human progress. The trouble with such ideas is that, without God, they are so much whistling in the dark. The godless believer in “progress” is in reality like the victim of an avalanche tumbled deep in snow. He has no idea which way is up because he has no means by which to measure anything of the kind. Ultimately he must use religious categories to orient himself.

Gray keeps on saying much the same thing in many different ways, such as his contention that “secular thought is mostly composed of repressed religion.” This is all so obviously correct that, like so many other blindingly obvious things that we prefer to ignore, nobody likes to discuss it. Perhaps most definitive of all is his observation that godless searches for a universal law are futile. “Without a law giver, what can a universal moral law mean?” he asks. “If you think of morality as part of the natural behaviour of the human animal, you find that humans do not live according to a single moral code. Unless you think one of them has been mandated by God, you must accept the variety of moralities as part of what it means to be human.” Well, exactly. No God: no law. No law: no morals, just situational, alterable ethics. I am amazed that so few seem to realize the implications of atheism for the rule of law over power, the one thing that really sustains human civilization.

I was delighted to discover in Hitchens’s review this 1930 quote from Einstein, in response to a question about his religious beliefs:

Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvellously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza’s Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.

Einstein’s library parable tells a poetic truth, or rather, tells a truth poetically. I can understand how someone could not believe in the God of the Bible, or of the Koran, or of any particular religion. I don’t understand how someone could confidently assert that some sort of God does not exist. To do so amounts to walking through the library thinking that over the course of time, the books managed to assemble themselves.

change_me

(I should emphasize that “Einstein’s library” is not necessarily something Gray endorses, but an idea that came to Hitchens’s mind as he read Gray’s book.)

[Christopher] Hitchens isn’t even mentioned in Gray’s book. I can’t decide whether that is a slight on Hitchens or a mercy from Gray. But, Hitchens’s type of atheist, the God-hater, is represented in the figures of the Marquis de Sade and William Empson.

Like Sade, Hitchens in protesting that he hated God come across far more credibly than did his attestations of disbelieving in Him. Like Empson, he claims to find the entire Christian economy of salvation totalitarian. Hitchens’s mostly rhetorical attack on God really has the force of drama only because it is a reenactment of Satan’s rebellion, Non serviam. The frisson is in his implicit promise to carry on the argument even if the Almighty himself turns up at the opposing lectern. This was entertaining as performance, but occasionally ugly in effect. Hitchens would allow his atheism to make him cheer the murderous despoliation of the Russian Orthodox Church. He clearly could reconcile with totalitarianism, when it attacked what he hated.

Hitchens’s main argument that religion poisons everything was his assertion that only religion can make good people do evil things. That is, a person who normally acts with kindness can be cowed by divine authority to do what he would otherwise never do to others: torture, rape, murder, you name it. And indeed, you don’t have to go far back in the news archives to find some previously harmless boys throughout Europe who gave themselves over to jihad after a brief religious awakening they experienced in the course of torturing, raping, and murdering in Syria and Iraq.

Hitchens’s attempt to escape the obvious rejoinder to his argument — that political and social creeds inspire to do just that — is lame. He just reclassifies any political murders he finds too fanatical as religious ones. In fact, in this rhetorical sleight of hand, he does precisely the thing he claims to find so repugnant about Christianity: He creates a scapegoat on which to load all the sins in the world.

@Elijah: or you could just let some religious leader, or group of leaders, tell you what’s right and what’s wrong.

#2 Comment By KD On November 9, 2018 @ 7:00 pm

MH – Secular Misanthropist

Dear sir, I am not channeling Tillich. This is an ancient tradition that goes back to Plato, through Plotinus, Dionysius the Aeropagite, the Greek Fathers, Eckhart, etc.

Wittgenstein revived an aspect of it in his show/say distinction, and Heidegger did something with his ontic/ontological distinction, and Tillich probably lifted from Heidegger.

The book Theophany by Eric Perl is a short, well written introduction to this strand of thought. But surely you are familiar with Plato’s cave, and the escape to the sun and the return, speechless.

God as grammar: the difference between “Kristallnacht” and “Kristallnacht”.

How would you underline a fact, or put it in bold? This is where religion begins.

#3 Comment By KD On November 9, 2018 @ 7:05 pm

Daniel (not Larrison) asks:

KD wrote:

Besides which, the real problem is not dying, its dying bravely.

Serious question, KD:

Why should that even matter? Who’s keeping score? And even if they are, why should you care?

For the same reason Odin spends his days preparing for Ragnarok, even though he knows that he is destined to fall and die and the world dissolve in infinite chaos forever.

#4 Comment By Oakinhouston On November 9, 2018 @ 7:21 pm

Grey:

“The godless believer in “progress” is in reality like the victim of an avalanche tumbled deep in snow. He has no idea which way is up because he has no means by which to measure anything of the kind. Ultimately he must use religious categories to orient himself.”

Does any religion fit Grey’s requirements? Faith in Amon-Ra? Faith in Amaterasu? Faith in Allah?

If yes, then religion is just a social tool. It’s truth or falsity irrelevant. We just need someone to declare what Amon-Ra wants of us, and we know have a way to orient ourselves.

If no, if only Christianity can guide our morality and our progress, are Japanese immoral? Are Muslims, was every single person before the advent of Christianity.

I find it concerning when religion people argue that religious faith is NECESSARY for society or for mankind to achieve X, without recognizing that this makes all religions interchangeable. After all, faith in Ra lasted twice as much as Christianity has.

#5 Comment By Oakinhouston On November 9, 2018 @ 7:51 pm

“”KD

“It suggests something of a natural teleology, which if the universe is a manifestation of God, would entail a sign of Divine intent.”

If there’s a natural teleology, why would you assume mankind is it’s end.? Why wouldn’t mankind be just a step in the process to the real teleology of the universe, just like the 200 million years when dinosaurs were the apex of evolution Have now turned into fuel for our SUVs

#6 Comment By JonF On November 10, 2018 @ 7:25 am

Re: “In a series of infinite time, all possibilities turn up at least once

Not necessarily true. Inifnity is not a synonym for “everything”. example: the set if all even numbers is infinite, but contains no odd numbers.

#7 Comment By JonF On November 10, 2018 @ 7:31 am

Re: Having been to a few funerals, I don’t think people find solace in them.

I would dispute this. I was quite touched and, yes, consoled by how many people came out for my step-mother’s funeral and viewing– people I had not thought of in years. Even the deli staff from the local Kroger’s whom Ma would chat (and chat and chat) with while grocery shopping with showed up.

#8 Comment By KD On November 10, 2018 @ 8:07 am

Oakinhouston:

Interesting question, but I do not see that “mankind” has a teleology at all. Communities have a natural teleology, which is generated by war and competition for resources.

The question is why individuals would be subject to moral prescriptions, and the answer would be so that they could form an effective polis, and actualize their true potential as “political animals”. Further, I could go so far as to say that the true problem of contemporary modernity is that life is ordered in such a way as to deny people a true opportunity to actualize who they are, citizens of a well-ordered polis.

#9 Comment By KD On November 10, 2018 @ 8:24 am

I think the idea of sin may have too much of a religious valence, but if we look at the natural world, in the absence of competition and conflict there is only decay, and in the presence of competition and conflict, we find excellence and nobility (“arete”).

If we look at this natural tendency toward decay as “sin”, then we see the “wages of sin” is death. Likewise, if this decay were somehow removed from the order of things, then it might be possible to achieve excellence without a ceaseless and infernal blood struggle. I think this is the Christian Hope for the Kingdom of God, but it requires rebirth from a fleshly body to a spiritual body, a transformation of the world itself.

In contrast, the utopians believe that the flesh can support the Kingdom of God if we just put them in charge.

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